Innholdsfortegnelse for April 8, 2024 i India Today

The differences between Karnataka and the Centre over disbursal of Union funds have escalated in the runup to the general election, with the state’s Siddaramaiah-led Congress government filing a writ petition in Supreme Court on March 23 seeking the release of central aid for drought relief. In the petition, Karnataka said that rainfall deficit during the 2023 monsoon resulted in 223 of the state’s 236 sub-districts being drought-hit during last year’s kharif cultivation season. An inter-ministerial central team had also visited the state for a field-level assessment, and the Siddaramaiah government added that assistance was pending even after five months of completion of the process. The filing of the writ petition has contributed to a verbal duel between the Karnataka government and the Narendra Modi-led BJP government at the Centre.…

If micro-management is a barometer, Narendra Modi seems to be one up on the other national party in this respect as well. The prime minister has been spending long hours at every meeting of the BJP’s central election committee (CEC). Before the release of its first list, he is said to have immersed himself in the selection process from around eight in the evening till well past three in the morning. Why, he did not even take a bio break in that time, a Union minister tells us, and drank only three glasses of nariyal paani in that time. Rahul Gandhi, by contrast, has skipped at least the past three consecutive meetings of his party’s CEC. His call for senior leaders to contest the Lok Sabha polls also seems to…

GROUP 1 NDA NEEDS TO MAINTAIN ITS TALLY It’s imperative for the NDA to repeat its strike rate of over 90 per cent in these 19-odd states and UTs. Maharashtra and Bihar are critical, given the constant political churn. And so is Karnataka, where the BJP lost the state polls 48 NO. OF SEATS THE NDA NEEDS TO GAIN TO REACH THE 400 MARK GROUP 2 MOST CRITICAL TO NDA’S 400+ PLAN In these four key states and the Northeast, the NDA had done fairly well, securing nearly 60 per cent of the 185 seats. An improvement in the strike rate to 80 per cent can give it the critical push to gain 30-40 seats GROUP 3 NDA HAS SCOPE TO IMPROVE ITS TALLY For the NDA, the biggest challenge and…

It was during the India Against Corruption (IAC) agitation in 2011 that Arvind Kejriwal shot to national fame. The movement, allegedly backed by the RSS-BJP, gave voice to the public anger against graft at a time when the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the Centre was fighting allegations of several scams. Social activist Anna Hazare had been the face of the campaign but, by the next year, Kejriwal had shaped the public antipathy towards the It political class into a creation of his making—the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Its election symbol, the broom, was an apt representation of its intent to clean up Indian polity, resonating widely with the capital’s disillusioned electorate. If the IAC was one of the factors behind the fall of the Congress across the…

Jammu and Kashmir is getting ready for its first Lok Sabha election since the abrogation of Article 370 and the bifurcation of the erstwhile state into Union territories. Making the contest interesting is the presence of two new local parties—the J&K Apni Party and Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP), both of which cropped up after 2019. Along with the J&K People’s Conference, they are posing an unforeseen challenge to the traditional dominance of the National Conference (NC) and Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Polls are to be held in the UT in the first five of the seven phases: April 19 (Udhampur constituency), April 26 (Jammu), May 7 (Anantnag-Rajouri), May 13 (Srinagar) and May 20 (Baramulla). The erstwhile J&K state had six Lok Sabha seats—three in Kashmir, two in Jammu, one…

RIA DASGUPTA IS ALL OF 22, BUT SHE HAS HAD THREE FULL-TIME JOBS already and is on her fourth stint now, with a publishing house. She makes no bones about the job-hopping. “I couldn’t gel well with my colleagues and supervisors at the first two jobs. The third expected me to work after-hours and on weekends with no extra pay,” says Ria, a graduate in English from Calcutta University. “I’ve seen my parents give up their entire lives and health for work. I don’t want to do the same. I want opportunities that will allow me to grow.” Mumbai-based Shreya Prasad, the same age as Dasgupta, has similar views on life. She remembers how her father would go to work even when he was running a fever. “He had no…

Mittle was barely 13 when she started personalising her notebooks and designing weekly planners. “As a young child obsessed with building my inventory of stationery at home, I was perpetually disappointed with boring colours and covers of the notebooks that I used in school,” she says. Pushed by her mother, who is herself a jewellery designer and entrepreneur, Mittle started making personalised stationery for family and friends under her brand Chic Stationery, where “every item is designed keeping creativity and luxury in mind". She completed her graduation last year, and, unlike most of her peers, decided not to go for campus placements, preferring to look after her business. However, she doesn’t reject the idea of taking up a job. "There are many traits that corporate jobs instil in you, such…

Scientists have found that slow rhythmical oscillations of 4-12 Hertz per second are ideal for triggering the “emptiness mechanism” in the human brain. Which is why we tend to drift off during activities with a rhythmical element, whether that’s a meditation, with its measured breathing and mantras, or a journey by train. Some trains are better than others for achieving this agreeable state, the Royal Scotsman being one. It is an Edwardian-styled affair with tartan everywhere, on sofas and soft furnishings, on staff—and potentially on you too, should you wish to pay a visit before setting off to the outfitters Kinloch Anderson, who designed the train’s tartan and will tailor your own bespoke ensemble. But my favourite thing about the Royal Scotsman is its veranda at the end of the…

Boxed, boring laptop designs can finally rest in peace. Why? With Apple’s new MacBook Air (2024), sleek meets geek in the most stylish way possible. Whether you’re a busy student darting from one lecture to another or a jet-setting professional creating presentations mid-flight, the choice between a nimble 13-inch or 15-inch model means there’s a MacBook Air (MBA) for everyone. Powered by the jawdropping M3 chip, this laptop isn’t just a device; it’s your portal to crushing deadlines, streaming in hyper-quality, and turning every café into a concert hall. We got our hands on the larger 15-inch version of the MBA and this what we could make of the lean and mean machine that is on track to bring the AI revolution to your doorstep. Bringing Back Eco Chic The…

The rich-poor divide in India has never been a secret. If anything, it has only grown wider. The fact only got reaffirmed in a paper released recently by the World Inequality Lab, a Paris-based research organisation. The country’s top 1 per cent income and wealth shares have reached historical highs and are among the highest in the world. By FY2023, the findings reveal, the top 1 per cent of Indians held a 22.6 per cent share in the country’s income and 40 per cent of its wealth. Inequality is said to have declined post-Independence till the early 1980s, after which it began rising and has skyrocketed since the early 2000s, according to the paper, titled ‘Income and Wealth Inequality in India, 1922-2023: The Rise of the Billionaire Raj’. The top…

The lively notes of brass and percussion instruments echoed through the Upper Lake in Bhopal, as the Madhya Pradesh Police Band performed for the locals and tourists thronging the popular spot on a Sunday evening in late January. This performance marked a new era for police bands in the state. A month prior, just three days after being sworn in as chief minister, Mohan Yadav had made an unusual request during a visit to the police headquarters (PHQ) in Bhopal. Even as the top cops were busy reeling out crime figures and details of initiatives being taken to curtail them, Yadav directed the state police chief, Sudhir Saxena, to ensure every district had its own police band—scaling up from just five currently to 55. What’s the idea behind this move?…

Maharashtra deputy chief minister and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Ajit Pawar may be facing not just a political battle but a personal one too in family stronghold Baramati. Ajit, who is intent on fielding wife Sunetra against cousin and three-time Lok Sabha MP Supriya Sule, is finding himself increasingly isolated in the Pawar parivar. His younger brother, Shrinivas aka Bapu, has launched a scathing attack against him for deserting uncle Sharad Pawar. Addressing villagers in Baramati, Shrinivas said, “Some of my friends are saying the coming years will be of Dada (Ajit), not Saheb (Pawar). This thought caused me a lot of agony as we do not value an aged person because we want to take benefits from another person for the next 10 years. Those who think like…

The major parties of Tamil Nadu—the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam—firmly believe that what is launched from Tiruchi augurs well for their election prospects. While DMK supremo M.K. Stalin began his campaign from Siruganur on March 22, AIADMK general secretary and former chief minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami flagged off his campaign from Vannankoil, also in the same district, on March 24. In this, they are following in the footsteps of their respective party stalwarts—M. Karunanidhi and M.G. Ramachandran—who, too, were strong votaries of “auspicious and successful beginnings” to triumph at the hustings in the past. Except that only one—Stalin or EPS—can be the winner.…

➘ On Nov. 17, 2021, the AAP government in Delhi launches a new excise policy marking the government’s exit from the liquor business. Projecting a revenue increase of Rs 9,500 crore, AAP claims the policy will end the liquor mafia and black marketing, boost customer satisfaction and ensure fair distribution of liquor vends ➘ 849 liquor stores were to open in Delhi across 32 zones, each with a maximum 27 outlets. Earlier, govt corporations ran 475 of the 864 liquor stores ➘ On Jun. 2, 2022, the Congress writes to the Delhi Police seeking a probe into a ‘multi-crore scam’ in the distribution of liquor licences ➘ On Jul. 8, Delhi chief secretary Naresh Kumar submits a report to Lt Gov. V.K. Saxena, accusing the AAP regime of providing undue…

Former defence minister and Congress leader A.K. Antony has always maintained a spotless, carefully cultivated image in his seven-decadelong sojourn through democracy’s pathways. But at the ripe old age of 84, the man once described as the St. Antony of Indian politics finds himself at a political crossroads. Elder son Anil Antony has defected to the BJP and is making his electoral debut in the Pathanamthitta Lok Sabha seat in south Kerala against one of his father’s staunch followers, sitting Congress MP Anto Antony. CPI(M) leader and former state finance minister Dr Thomas Isaac is the third face in the contest. All the buzz in the constituency is whether Antony Sr will campaign in Pathanamthitta or not. The veteran leader has not been keeping well, but on March 26 he…

On March 27, Odisha chief minister and Biju Janata Dal (BJD) president Naveen Patnaik announced the first list of the party’s candidates for the simultaneous four-phase polls, starting May 13. For the state’s 147 assembly constituencies, 72 names were made public, confirming that Patnaik will re-contest from Hinjili for a sixth term. And for the 21 Lok Sabha seats, 15 names were put out. The party inducted 13 new faces for the state poll and renominated four of its parliamentary candidates. Among the new names in the Lok Sabha list is general secretary (organisation) Pranab Prakash Das who will take on Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, currently a Rajya Sabha member, in Sambalpur. These were not easy calls and were taken after serious deliberations, sources say. Patnaik has been actively…

Thakur decided to start his own tech firm at the age of 15. Today, his company specialises in smart home systems that automate devices such as lights, audio, security, etc. Thakur was nervous about starting his own venture, but what helped him take the leap, he says, was creating the right environment. "I focused on the bigger picture. I surrounded myself with mentors and like-minded people who believed in my vision. Their guidance helped me navigate the initial hurdles," he says. Thakur loves being his own boss. "While the service sector offers stability and a structured environment, having my own company has allowed me to pursue my creative ideas and chart my own path," he says.…

Shakti: Fair & Fierce, at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) in New Delhi, demands two visits. One for tasting and the second for devouring whole! With over one hundred artworks by 55 Indian women artists, thoughtfully curated by Sushma K. Bahl, with inputs from Meghna Vyas Arora of the NGMA, the show is visually arresting, heart-felt and transgressive. ‘Desire’, by Shanthamani Muddaiah, for instance, looks like an enormous black tongue. Thrust up at an angle, its surface covered in short charcoal sticks, it licks the whole universe with its raw energy. The charcoal echoes the raging fire that created it. We do not see the monstrous gullet from which the tongue protrudes, nor hear its roaring scream, yet we are scorched by that infinite furnace. The white and…

Arjun Rampal is what one would describe as a universal traveller. Life has taken him from Jabalpur, his birthplace, to Deolali, the army base where his maternal grandfather Brigadier Gurdayal Singh was stationed, to the lush hills of Kodaikanal, where he did his schooling. “I felt I had reached Riverdale or something. It was alien to everything that I had been surrounded with,” he says of his days in Kodi. After a childhood spread across several small towns, he arrived in New Delhi to pursue college and then moved to Bombay to start off a career as a model. There’s also an adventurous chapter in London and later in New York, where at one point he was so broke that he slept in Central Park for three nights until he…

ENGINE 1998cc, 4-cylinder turbo-diesel POWER 204 bhp TORQUE 430 Nm TRANSMISSION 8 speed automatic 0-100kmph 8.3 seconds TOP SPEED 210 PRICE ₹93 lacs (ex-showroom) Land Rover’s association with the word ‘Velar’ goes back to 1969. It was 55 years ago when Range Rover, the premium segment of Land Rover, was first introduced and the early prototypes preceding the launch of the first Range Rover in 1970 were badged Velar. Introduced in 2018 and sitting between full-sized models (the eponymous Range Rover and Sport) and the compact ‘Evoque’, the Velar was an instant hit. JLR has now refreshed it, making it sleeker and smarter. Like its previous iteration, the 2024 Range Rover Velar dazzles with its futuristic allure, blending sleek lines and a sloping roof with piercing daytime lights, creating an…

➘ Just 1% of Indians hold a 22.6% share of the country’s income and 40% of its wealth ➘ India’s top 1% income share is among the highest in the world ➘ Inequality declined post-Independence till the early 1980s. It has skyrocketed since the early 2000s ➘ The top 1% earned Rs 53 lakh a year on average in FY23—23 times the average Indian, who earned Rs 2.3 lakh ➘ The richest 9,223 individuals (of 920 million Indian adults) earned Rs 48 crore on average (2,069 times the average Indian’s income) ➘ Rise in private enterprise post-liberalisation and the growth of the capital markets led to increased wealth in the hands of the top few ➘ The shares of the bottom 50% and middle 40% have remained depressed primarily due…

Kingship knows no kinship. At no time does it become more evident than during elections. On March 24, as the BJP gave a ticket to Sita Soren, the estranged sister-in-law of former Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren, to contest from the Dumka Lok Sabha seat, it became clear that the party wanted to shake the Soren family’s hold from its bastion. Sita, who quit the Jharkhand Mukti Mor cha (JMM) and her seat to join the BJP on March 19, is the widow of Shibu Soren’s eldest son Durga Soren, who died in 2009. Her departure came in the wake of sharp differences with Hemant's wife Kalpana. Hemant is currently in judicial custody. Kalpana was not appointed CM after the Enforcement Directorate arrested him in January, allegedly because of Sita’s…

ON March 6, Dhananjay Singh, mafia don and former MP of Jaunpur, was convicted by a local MP-MLA court in a case of kidnapping, extortion and criminal conspiracy from back in May 2020. Dhananjay, 48, and his aide Santosh Vikram Singh, were sentenced to seven years in a case relating to the abduction of a Jal Nigam project manager, Abhinav Singhal. Purvanchal (eastern Uttar Pradesh), which includes places like Jaunpur, Azamgarh, Gorakhpur, Varanasi and Mau, is home to a number of notorious bahubalis, so no surprises that Dhananjay made the national headlines the next day. What did surprise was that this was the don’s first conviction ever even though he has been ‘active’ for at least three decades, and at one time had 46 cases registered against him, including a…

SOUND WAVES, ONCE produced, do not really perish. Acousticians tell us that, unless met by an equal and opposite wave, a sonic disturbance of the air only loses amplitude, becomes inaudible, but lingers out there—bouncing off the walls of the universe like a tape on loop. It might have been handy for music historians to be able to listen in on what was being sung in 17thcentury Tanjore, or by Sultan Hussain Shah Sharqi as he relaxed in the chhattri above his hamaam in 15th c Jaunpur, or what Matanga muni heard in the Deccan countryside centuries earlier. Presently, they are forced to stitch together a picture of our aural history from fragmentary pieces of text. But any future machine would have it much easier picking up an unholy commotion…

It is rare to come across a reader in the English language unfamiliar with Ramachandra Guha. A prolific and elegant writer with major books on modern India, environment, cricket and politics, numerous essays and newspaper columns, he is difficult to ignore or disregard. The journey of an aspiring cricketer and middling academic to a promising scholar and now a ‘public intellectual’ and patron saint to young scholars makes for a fascinating tale. The Cooking of Books is an unusual account of the fortuitous relationship between an author and his editor, one loud, exuberant and opinionated, the other grumpy, acerbic and reclusive, who through episodic meetings and more frequent letter exchanges form a rare and unusually productive partnership. “Good editors, really good editors, are very rare, in fact rarer than good…

In the companion book to DAG’s ongoing exhibition Kali: Reverence and Rebellion, curator and long-time art columnist Gayatri Sinha writes that her essay “seeks to trace, through a spectrum of readings, Kali, her worship and the vilification that recasts her scriptural depiction, as well as her more settled forms of invocation in ritual performance and worship”. The same can be said for the exhibition, where we see how, across centuries, representations of Kali have been influenced by artistic and commercial concerns, hybrid religious/spiritual beliefs and whims and fancies of rich patrons. Divided into three sections, the exhibition covers a lot of socio-historic ground, whether it’s Kalighat painters selling temple souvenirs in the 19th century, Jaipur miniaturists interpreting Kali’s various aspects through their bordered works, or Orientalist depictions from artists like…

Paola Navone’s cosmopolitan and non-conformist spirit is captured poetically in Baxter’s Outdoor collection, where each project is a dot on the globe that summons the character, exoticism and fragrance of the place. It features the humid tropical forests in Manila and Manao, where the seating collections are made from reed, a lightweight, flexible and sustainable material that characterises garden furniture. Then there is the Arizona desert, with its agile structure and nomadic vocation; the ocean, where the Panama Bold seating system floats like islands with a core of Okoumé, a light and weather-resistant African wood. All the materials that make up the new outdoor collections are a library of original sensations, traditional accents and earthy materials such as natural terracotta, minerals such as lava stone and Palladiana Green marble, metals…

Dreaming of close encounters with the Big Five in Masai Mara, watching the Great Migration on a hot air balloon or a brush with Kenya’s colonial past? As you ponder choices for board and lodge, Spice picks out the cream of the crop—whether its the newest on the block, hotels where history plays mannequin or uber luxury camps in the heart of the African bush that will give the Kenyan adventure an extra edge. HISTORIC HOTELS IN NAIROBI Giraffe Manor Tuck into pancakes and waffles as the endangered Rothschild giraffes, who live in the surrounding forest sanctuary, stick their long necks in through the hotel’s glass windows looking for their breakfast fix—grass pellets. Sprawling over 12 acres, the ivy covered manor house that dates back to the 1930s, lies in…

The mesmerising beauty of an emerald is incomparable as it glimmers under celestial light. Despite the adoration for this mineral gift of nature, acquiring one can be intimidating. In an emerald, you’ll find a garden of inclusions, fractures, and fissures, an integral part of its character. But like any garden, emeralds also require care to enhance their natural allure. Makeup helps us hide blemishes and achieve clear, smooth skin. We also utilise fillers such as hyaluronic acid, ceramides, botox, and more. Similarly, the gem industry uses fillers to improve the look of emeralds. Because of their close refractive index to emeralds, these fillers improve the clarity and lustre of the gemstone by reducing the visibility of fractures and fissures. While there are a variety of substances used by the industry…

They don’t do things by halves at Ranthambore’s hottest new hotel. On my first night at Bookmark Resorts, Jogi Mahal, Ranthambore, despite my weak protests, I was plied with a five-course continental meal, the highlight of which was catfish from the lake, the ‘catch of the day’. This set the tone for the rest of the trip and I luxuriated in the hospitality that Rajasthan is justly famed for, from being deep-tissue pummelled at the Sansha Spa where you can choose from five different massage oils, to having thoughtful picnic hampers at hand whenever we set out in search of the elusive big cat. Named after a Ranthambore icon–the old hunting lodge sitting on the shores of Padam Talao below Ranthambore Fort–Jogi Mahal is the second property from Bookmark Resorts,…

Feri Bar sits coquettishly at the rocky feet of the Mandovi river, borrows its name from Goa’s iconic water vessel—the ferry—has a 9 foot long fish skeleton at the copper bar staring back at everyone who walks through the wooden door and aged coconut palm slants at the heart of this tony cosy space. Feri Bar is from the same stable as the famed Sopo, and Room One restaurants—by the trio Bonita Mascarenhas, Vipin Raman and Siddharth Kerkar—so naturally the food is superlative. Well, it’s a bar, hence, the drinks sprawl over three of the four pages of the menu. The spirit is high—Hibiki, Yamakazi, Suntori Toki, Codigo Anejo/Blanco, the best of cognac, Pisco, and liqueurs. Try their signature concoctions such as 808, Riverside Paloma and Feri Represent. In this…